“You shall have—not as a sacrifice, you understand, but as a Christmas present,—the greatest man living in France. You shall have no less a gift than the life of that weasel-faced prime-minister who now rules France, the all-powerful Cardinal Dubois. For the rest, your bargain is reasonable: it contains none of those rash mortgagings of the soul, about which—if you will pardon my habitual frankness, Monsieur Janicot,—one has to be careful in all business dealings with your people. So let us subscribe this bond.” Janicot laughed: his traffic was not in souls, he said; and he said also that Florian, for a nobleman, was deplorably the man of business. None the less, Janicot now produced from his pocket a paper upon which the terms of their bargain happened, rather unaccountably, to be neatly written out: and they both signed this paper, with the pens and ink which Florian had not previously noticed to be laid there so close at hand, upon one of the tree-stumps. Then Janicot put up the paper, and remarked: “A thing done has an end. For the rest, these fellows will escort you to Brunbelois.” “And of what fellows do you speak?” asked Florian. “Why, those servants of mine just behind you,” replied Janicot. And Florian, turning, saw in the roadway two very hairy persons in an oxcart, drawn by two brown goats which were as large as oxen; and yet Florian was certain no one of these things had been in that place an instant before. This Janicot, however easy to see through had been his traps for Florian, was beyond doubt efficient. Florian said: “The liveries of your retainers tend somewhat to the capillary. None the less, I shall be deeply honored, monsieur, to be attended by any servants of your household.” Janicot replied: “Madame Mélusine has ordained against men and the living of mankind eternal banishment from the high place. Very well!” He drew his sword, and without any apparent effort he struck off the head of his brown horse. He set this head upon a stake, and he thrust the other end of the stake into the ground, so that the stake stood upright. “I here set up,” said Janicot, “a nithing post. I turn the post. I turn the eternal banishment against Madame Mélusine.” He waited for a moment. He was entirely brown: about him lilies bloomed, with a surprising splendor of white and gold: and the flowering at his feet was more red than blood. He moved the stake so that the horse’s head now faced the east, and Janicot said: “Also I turn this post against the protecting monsters of the high place, in order that they may all become as witless as now is this slain horse. I send a witlessness upon them from the nithing post, which makes witless and takes away the strength of the rulers and of the controlling gods of whatever land this nithing post be turned against. I, who am what I am, have turned the post. I have sent forth the Seeing of All, the Seeing that makes witless. A thing done has an end.” _6._ _Philosophy of the Lower Class_